After the Fall
by JudyH
Summary: A tag to the season finale.


**This is a tag to the wonderful season eight finale, ****_Sacrifice,_**** so do not read if you have not seen it. Here there be spoilers, so be forewarned. **

_...Warm..._

He was warm. Comfortably, toasty, incredibly warm. A simple sensation, sure, for most folk. But for him, he hadn't felt this kind of warm in such a long time. It was soothing, comforting.

He thought he might have felt this earlier; might have been half asleep (or half-_conscious_, the way his luck had been recently). But this seemed to be the first time he felt aware of his surroundings enough to really pay attention.

Sure, he had felt flashes of fever, but that wasn't normal heat. That was alternating cycles of chills and fever, definitely not normal. Not _this. _No, this was a sensation he had almost forgotten how to feel.

Warm...and _safe._

That's when he knew something had changed. Instinct kicked in, years of survival training ingrained since childhood prompted him to concentrate, to switch on his other senses. All but one: he kept his eyes closed, feigning sleep as he listened to the muted sounds around him, gathering what limited intel he could.

After all, he could be in the hands of...well, whatever shape and form evil was appearing in this week. Experience was a harsh teacher; better to be prepared for whatever awaited him when he finally did open his eyes.

But there was nothing: no sounds at all...nothing to enlighten him as to where he was, or how he got there, for that matter. He felt his heartbeat quicken; it pounded in his chest at a speed that couldn't be healthy and he wondered if he concentrated hard enough, if that sound would be the only one he could hear.

But...there was the sense of smell. He almost opened his eyes in surprise at the scents he breathed in: there was a familiar scent of dusty, age dried paper. And gun oil. And clean linens near his face, now that he slowed his breathing and concentrated. And beyond that...soup.

_Soup?_

Chicken noodle, if his memory served him correctly. The soup his brother swore cured all ills, real and imagined. It had been a staple of his life..well, forever...and now he knew where he was.

How he got there was still a mystery. But the biggest riddle: _where_ he was, was now solved, and he knew without a doubt it was safe to open his eyes.

"'Bout time you woke up." Dean stood in the doorway, a metal tray with a bowl of his magic cure-all balanced in his hands. He strode into Sam's bedroom, placed the tray on the desk and came over to perch on the side of the bed. "How're you feeling?"

Sam swallowed, his tongue thick and dry. "Not sure...better, I think."

Dean nodded, his eyes narrowed as he gave his ghoulishly pale brother the once-over. "You look better. Of course, after a couple of pints of that..." he pointed to something over Sam's shoulder. "You'd have to look better."

Sam followed his brother's gaze to a hastily rigged IV pole fashioned from a twisted coat hanger which hung haphazardly from a nail pounded into the headboard. Hanging from the loop was a near empty plastic bag, its reddish contents feeding slowly down a tube that Sam now noticed was attached to his left arm.

Sam turned back to face Dean, his sunken eyes wide. "Where did you get that?" When Dean didn't answer, his eyes dropped to the blood stained swatch of gauze wrapped around his brother's forearm.

Dean shrugged as he leaned forward to inspect the contents of the bag. "Remembered Dad teaching me how to do it. You needed it more than me at the time; good thing we got the same blood type, right?"

Sam simply stared back, unable to fathom just how bad his situation must have been for his brother to have to drain blood from his own veins to save him.

But, he had to admit...he did feel a bit better. Still newborn kitten weak, exhausted beyond belief...but alive. Alive because of his brother, who was frowning at him now. Sam saw the signs of a lecture coming before Dean even opened his mouth.

"You were damn near drained dry, Sammy." Dean stood and paced across the room. "You had been hacking up blood for weeks. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, letting you siphon off what little you had left to pump it into Crowley."

"We didn't have a choice..."

"The_ hell_ we didn't!" came Dean's angry reply as he turned. "We should have walked away as soon as we saw what the trials were doing to you. _I_ should have made you stop."

Sam shifted in the bed, unable to hide the grimace of pain as cuts and bruises and abused muscles he had forgotten about reminded him what his body had been through during the last trial. "I wasn't gonna let you stop me, Dean. You know that."

"And that's why you're as much an idiot as I am." Dean dropped into a chair and busied himself stirring the now cooling soup. He stared into the congealing mixture, refusing to meet his brother's eyes. "You know what the worst part of all this is, Sammy?"

"That we failed?" Sam said softly, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"That you were doing it, putting yourself through all that, for all the wrong reasons."

Sam blinked, then looked over at Dean, who was absently stirring the soup, still refusing to meet his eyes. "I don't..."

Dean sighed out a long breath, then met Sam's confused gaze. "You did it because you thought you had something to prove to me. You had this stupid assed notion that you were a disappointment to me, that you had failed me somehow. You thought taking on this suicide mission would redeem you in my eyes."

The silence between them was palpable, broken only by Sam's harsh swallow as he looked away.

Dean leaned forward into Sam's line of sight. "Tell me I'm wrong."

"I thought I could do it," Sam whispered. "I really did, Dean."

"Of course you could do it. You could also throw yourself under a bus. Doesn't mean you _should._"

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," Sam hissed as he summoned what little strength he had to push himself up in the bed.

"Well, you damned near did. Now," Dean said as he lifted the soup bowl from the tray. "Eat some of this."

"You're wrong, you know." Sam lifted a shaking hand to push the bowl away. "I did it...I took on the trials...so you wouldn't."

Dean huffed and shook his head, setting the bowl aside. "Didn't think I could handle it, eh?"

"God, don't get all pissy about it." Sam felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes. " We've already discussed this. You were in no state of mind to take them on when you first got back from Purgatory."

"And you were?" Dean asked. "All ready and rested from your little sabbatical in Texas with...what was her name again?"

SsSsSsSsSs

Sam blinked and looked away and Dean could have kicked himself. His brother had one foot literally in death's door a few hours before, and here Dean was, turning the pity party back on himself. There was a time and a place for this discussion, and this was neither. He reached out, firmly grasping his little brother's wrist; it felt too small and fragile to belong to the man who had outgrown him years before. He wondered just how much weight Sam had lost and how long before he would regain it and the strength that came with it.

"Do you have any idea..." Sam slowly turned back to face him, the pain and regret in his eyes so similar to the scene in the church that it took Dean's breath away. He had to clear his throat and take a deep breath before continuing.

"Do you know...how close you came to dying?"

"Dean..."

"Do you know that you were on the verge of having a heart attack? That you probably didn't have enough blood left in your system to..."

"I'm sorry..."

"_Damnit_, don't say you're sorry!" Dean was back on his feet again, pacing the room like a caged tiger. "You do realize we are all out of free passes, right? The angels don't give a damn about us anymore. We served our purpose; we're nothing to them now." He stopped, facing the far wall and for a moment, Sam thought he was going to put his fist through it. After a long pause, Dean turned to face him again.

"The next time you die, you're _gone_, Sam. Don't you understand that?"

"Same goes for you," came the soft reply from the bed. "I'm not gonna let you throw yourself under a bus, either. So, how about we both agree to disagree on this, and let it go?"

Dean sighed again and came to stand over his brother. "Works for me, for now, anyway. Now, are you gonna eat this or not?"

Sam raised his head slightly and peered into the bowl, frowning at the greasy film floating on top. "I think not."

"I slaved over a hot stove to make this for you, you know." Dean peered into the bowl, stirring the congealed mixture with his finger. "And this is the thanks I get."

"You eat it then." Sam sank back into the soft pillow and closed his eyes. He smiled to himself as he heard his big brother make a gagging sound. "Dean?"

"Yeah?" Came the answer from across the room as his brother turned in the doorway on his way back to the kitchen.

"The angels..."

He heard soft footsteps approach the bed again; Sam opened his eyes to see his brother looking down on him with a pained expression.

"They fell?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, looks like."

"All of them?"

"I don't know, Sam. It was..." Dean paused, glancing at the ceiling at a loss for words. "It was the damnest thing I ever saw. And for us, that's saying a lot."

"What are we gonna do?"

SsSsSsSsSs

That one simple sentence gave Dean pause. How many times had he heard that question over the years? How many times had his little brother looked to him for answers when it seemed they were out of options, their backs against the wall? It never got any easier to answer that question, but a magic answer wasn't what Sam was looking for, anyway. It was reassurance, and that was something he could do.

"I told you. We'll figure it out as we go along, just like we always do."

"That hasn't always worked out for us in the past, you know."

Dean nodded, a slight smile creasing his features. "This is true."

Sam frowned at the catheter in his arm, glancing up at the near empty bag of blood connected to it before closing his eyes and settling back on the pillow. "Gonna be different this time."

"How come?" Dean leaned forward to hear the soft reply from his exhausted, anemic, pain in the ass little brother:

"This time, whatever we have to do, we're gonna do it together."

With that, Sam breathed out a deep but steady breath and slipped back into a healing sleep. Dean stood at the end of the bed for a moment, silently looking down at his brother before shaking his head and reaching down to tuck the covers around Sam's shoulders. "God, you are such a girl."

He moved to the doorway, unable to resist one more look over his shoulder to make sure his charge was comfortable. As he switched off the light, he glanced down at the cold bowl of soup in his hands with distaste. "You're right about that, bro. But first, we gotta get you some better food than soup. Maybe something green and healthy." He suppressed a shudder as he walked down the hall.

"Or a steak...yeah...and some pie..."

The End


End file.
